What's the allure of these beats? I tried listening to most of these headphones and I can conclude this: They are over rated, over priced, under performing, pieces of crap! I also can't see anything special of building in the beats sound engine to laptops and phones. This is plain crazy!

What's the allure of these beats? I tried listening to most of these headphones and I can conclude this: They are over rated, over priced, under performing, pieces of crap! I also can't see anything special of building in the beats sound engine to laptops and phones. This is plain crazy!

It's "status".....people know they are expensive so they think others will believe they are cool and affluent if they are seen wearing them.

What's the allure of these beats? I tried listening to most of these headphones and I can conclude this: They are over rated, over priced, under performing, pieces of crap! I also can't see anything special of building in the beats sound engine to laptops and phones. This is plain crazy!

If you sell anything with a celebrity's endorsement, people will likely eat it up regardless of its quality. Can't say how well the Beats work in the laptops/phones but I've seen some Dell XPS laptops with decent speakers by JBL.

Maybe I should wear my A900s to class to show the Beats-wearing crowd something that is at least decent (and is much less expensive)

If you sell anything with a celebrity's endorsement, people will likely eat it up regardless of its quality. Can't say how well the Beats work in the laptops/phones but I've seen some Dell XPS laptops with decent speakers by JBL.

Maybe I should wear my A900s to class to show the Beats-wearing crowd something that is at least decent (and is much less expensive)

you are comparing JBL with Beats/monster/Justin Bieber?! that's an insult. comparing an old noble brand with a .....
somewhere I saw a poster his Avatar was Justin Bieber I told him this can only mean two things you're homo or you're a 14 year old girl.
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right now iPhone4s 64GB is 1800$ in my country & it's a high seller product! there are some stuff that I will never understand they don't fit in my standards

With cell phones being the new MP3 player, any phone manufacturer that wants to appeal to young buyers is wanting to claim they know something about audio. Thus HTC buying into Beats. Expect everyone else to do a similar move/slide/investment.

Not everyone. We won't see "iPhone by 50 Cent" or any other such thing....the public already associates iphones with music.

Uhm... Apple started this trend by already have an iPod/iTunes app/store on the iPhone. In other words, they CAME from media players. Samsung rolled their media player division into their mobile division awhile back, but retain some of that history and reputation in their phones. Windows Phone7 devices have the Zune marketplace and history/rep to run with. Yes, the "public" uses their phones for music, but when their taste (music awareness) improves they'll be looking for phones that do music better than the generic motorola does.

I just want a phone with a good media player (as in iphone) that has the battery life of the RAZR MAXX!!! That thing has 21hrs of talk time, so I'd give it maybe 30hrs music runtime - not bad at all. And Motorola has good audio sq to boot. I want that, and then screw a portable media player.

And the ONLY reason we're not sold on Beats Audio is because we know better, and the average joe/Jane doesn't. The cellphone isn't the "next wave" of media player - it's the current trend.

for sure we will always see some players with better DAC & amp than all cellphones. but the point is it still worth to pay an extra 200-600 for a player or is it worth to carry an extra gadget outdoors when your cellphone can nearly do all the work that you may expect from a player.

Beats audio has become a pretty familiar brand around these parts: in addition to the ubiquitous headphones, the company has licensed its brand to HP and is majority owned by HTC ó both of which manufacture an increasing number of Beats-branded products. Regardless, it's the headphones that built the brand, and the future of who will be manufacturing them is a little more cloudy today as Beats and Monster will not be renewing their contract. Sources told Business Week that the split happened because of a disagreement over (what else?) money and credit, with each company believing it deserved more of both.

Monster, for its part, is going to move ahead and attempt to (re)build a headphone empire based on the Monster brand. That's the short term plan. The long term plan isn't clear but one fairly obvious move would be to merge with or buy out SOL Republic, a headphone company founded by Kevin Lee who happens to be son of Monster founder Noel Lee. Lee the younger, despite running his competing headphone brand, has said that he would be "honored' to take over the leading role of Monster someday, adding "Cut me open, Iím a monster and will always be a monster." Given Monster's mixed brand image (especially amongst anybody who know about cables), a partnership with SOL Republic would make a lot of sense.

Beats also has a murky future. The company will surely continue to license its brand out, but who will make headphones is unclear. It just so happens to be majority owned by HTC and HTC just so happens to be a manufacturer of consumer electronics. Even if HTC and Beats don't decide to go down that road, you can be sure that given the amount of money and marketshare that Beats has managed to snatch up, they'll find a way to ensure that there are many many more Beats-branded headphones to come.